The present invention relates to radio telecommunication systems. More particularly, and not by way of limitation, the present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for remote initial provisioning of Universal Subscriber Identity Modules (USIMs) and subsequent changing of an operator.
There is currently an ongoing study item in 3GPP targeting to create an architecture and solution for remote initial provisioning of USIMs and subsequent changing of an operator. The study is reported in the technical report, 3GPP TR 33.812, version 1.3.0. Remotely manageable USIMs are considered for Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, i.e., communication between devices without user interaction.
A typical use case for an M2M device is electric metering. In this case, an electric supplier company installs automatic metering devices that report the amount of consumed electricity back to the billing department via a 3GPP network. Since millions of such devices may be installed, remote management of subscriptions would greatly reduce costs, for example, in the case of a change of subscription. In this use case, the end user and the owner of the devices is an enterprise with a large number of devices in the field. Thus, it is likely that the owner will have its own servers that can manage the devices.
Another use case is for built-in terminals in cars. In this case it is a single owner of the car that would like to control which telecommunication operator the car is using, and also the services to which the car is attached such as insurance service, maintenance services, and road toll services. In this use case, it is envisioned that a car owner's mobile terminal could function as the enterprise server above, containing all the necessary intelligence to manage the car.
The existing 3GPP architecture and remotely managed procedure for provisioning an M2M device is complex and still leaves security gaps.
There is no solution for how to simplify the process of changing the operator, and how to couple that process to secure service set-up. Under existing procedures, at manufacture time, a Platform Validation Authority (PVA) certificate is installed as a trusted certificate in a M2ME device. However, all operators with a certificate signed by the PVA are able to perform a valid provisioning of the M2M device. This creates the problem commonly referred to as slamming, i.e., illegal changing of subscribers telephone service without their consent.
From an operator's perspective it is also important that the discovery function through which the device discovers its new Selected Home Operator (SHO) is authenticated by the device. An unauthenticated rouge discovery function could divert a large number of M2M devices to connect to some operator's network, causing a denial-of-service attack on the network.
Current devices use a SIM/USIM card to provide the TRE, and one method of changing the operator is to physically replace the SIM/USIM card. However, some devices are unattended, so physically changing the SIM/USIM card is difficult. Also, just because a person has physical access to the device does not mean that person has the right to change the operator.
There is currently no flexible authentication mechanism to prevent these types of attacks and drawbacks associated with the prior art.